


The Don

by runningwithdinosaurs



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (they're only threats), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, POV Outsider, Snakes, Threats of Violence, caricatures of mafioso, like an actual snake, mafia, mob boss Crowley, not a Crowley snake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 23:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20882684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runningwithdinosaurs/pseuds/runningwithdinosaurs
Summary: "They say he’s a part of the darkness. That he moves in the shadows and strikes like a snake. That he can charm a queen and then murder a man in cold blood between the appetizer and dessert."(Or the one where Crowley has become the most powerful mob boss in London, and after saving a certain bag of books, a certain angel is suddenly along for the ride.)





	The Don

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing intrigued me more (or at least stuck with me as much), as the German female agent saying “The famous Mr. Crowley” with something like awe or admiration in her voice. All I wanted to know was what Crowley had been up to to inspire that line. Others have written beautiful, long masterpieces with their version of events around that line. But my mind went straight to, well...mafia don. Oops. Also, I know that the two mob guys in this talk like caricatures of mafioso in NYC, but, well, they’re meant to be caricatures, really.

“There’s no way this guy is as scary as they say he is, right?”

“How should I know? I ain’t never seen him.”

“They say he’s a part of the darkness. That he moves in the shadows and strikes like a snake. That he can charm a queen and then murder a man in cold blood between the appetizer and dessert.”

“Do they say that, really? _I__diot_,” Mugsie smacked Wills upside his head. “This guy ain’t no great shakes. Trust me on that.”

Wills eyed the door in front of himself and his boss doubtfully. “All I know is that’s what they say.”

Mugsie raised his hand, probably to hit him again, but the door swung open before he could. The room before them was opulent, the chairs and couches clad in rich, deep reds, and upholstered in fine velvet and silk. Dark wood paneling on the walls brought an eeriness to the space, yet the gold lamps scattered throughout sent glowing light spilling across the burgundy carpet. A statue of two angels fighting (or, judging by their wings, a demon defeating an angel) stood between two wall-to-wall bookshelves absolutely brimming with books. And judging by the spines, the books were old. And maybe rare. Wills had been in college before all this started, so he had enough sense to recognize expensive books.

“Gentlemen,” a smooth voice lilted from the other end of the room. Their heads both snapped toward it. At a gigantic desk, the clear focal point of the room, sat a man. His feet, wearing what looked like snakeskin boots, were propped up on the desk, and his upper body was in shadow where it sprawled back in the wing-backed chair.

“Sir,” Mugsie said stiffly. “You asked for a meetin’?”

“I did,” the voice said. “Won’t you come sit?” A pale, slim hand emerged from the gloom to motion to the two chairs in front of the desk.

Wills and Mugsie slunk over and cautiously sank into the chairs.

The hand picked up a crystal tumbler full of a dark amber liquid and it disappeared into shadow as well. Wills suddenly worried that he’d have to pretend to drink something (which he wouldn’t, at the risk of poison). But no offer of refreshment came.

They sat in silence for a good minute before Mugsie finally burst out with, “So, eh, what’s this meetin’ about then? I ain’t usually _ summoned _ places, if you know what I mean.”

“Yet you came,” the smooth voice replied.

“Well, uh, yeah. Your reputation proceeds ya, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” he purred. “I really do.”

The man finally drew his legs down from the desk and leaned forward, a menacing smirk on his lips. Short, fire red hair artfully coiffed, a sharp, handsome face that looked as if it could cut glass, and dark glasses obscuring his eyes. Wills held his breath.

There he was: the famous Anthony J. Crowley.

“Gentlemen,” he continued, steepling his fingers together. “I’ve asked you here for a very specific reason.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Wills thought he saw movement. _ Oh God, was this all just an elaborate ploy to get us here to kill us? The gang’ll be dead in the water without Mugsie and me_.

But he soon realized it was not a gun being drawn by a hidden assailant. It was...a snake. A massive, glistening black snake that uncoiled itself from the chair it’d been on and slowly slithered toward the desk. Wills held his breath as he felt the snake brush gently by his ankle on its way. 

With the creature out of sight, Wills tuned back into the conversation his boss was having with the most feared and respected mafia don in London.

“It has recently come to my attention,” Crowley was drawling, “that your gang has taken up residence on Eastcastle Street.” His lips curled in a nasty, pointy smile. “Eastcastle Street is mine, gentlemen. I ask that you vacate it immediately.”

“Or what?” Mugsie blustered, always too big for his own britches.

“Or,” Crowley leaned further forward, “I will burn your operation to the ground. No man will be left alive. And no widows to grieve you, either.” He sat back in his chair, again in shadow. “Your choice, gentlemen. This meeting is simply a courteous warning.”

The clear threat in his voice felt anything but courteous. Wills breathed deeply through his nose, willing himself to stay calm. Crowley was famous for his quick and efficient “ending” of gangs that encroached on his territory. Wills really didn’t want to be next.

Mugsie sat there, bug-eyed, so Wills felt it his duty to step up. “Mr. Crowley, we did not realize that Eastcastle Street was yours. We can relo-”

The door burst open and Wills’ heart just about stopped. “My dear, look what just came!” In that instant, Crowley’s frightening exterior abruptly vanished. A small, indulgent smile crossed his lips before he immediately forced his face back into a scowl. For a moment there, Wills thought, he looked almost human. 

A short, slightly plump man clad in a fine, if out-of-fashion, suit of white and beige bustled into the room and paid them absolutely no mind.

“Angel,” Crowley drawled. “Can’t you see I have...guests?” And the way he said _ guests _sent a shiver down Wills’s spine. Decidedly not human, then. 

The man ignored him and walked right over and sat on the arm of Crowley’s chair.

Even the confirmation that that particular..._rumor_...about Crowley was true did nothing to ease Wills’s discomfort. It didn’t feel like blackmail when it seemed as if this man could kill him with a single look.

Especially when the snake slithered up to curl protectively around the new man’s shoulders and he _ petted _it absentmindedly. “Yes, I have eyes, you know, Crowley. But look!” He excitedly produced an old leather-bound book. “It came!” This man’s eyes were dancing with joy and lightness.

He was the antithesis to _everything _ that was Crowley.

“Charming,” Crowley drawled, and rested his hand on the man’s knee. He turned his attention back to Wills and Mugsie. Wills thought an introduction was forthcoming, but Crowley simply raised an eyebrow, as if daring them to question the location of his hand, and continued, “You were speaking of relocation.”

“Oh, uhh, yeah,” Wills murmured, tearing his eyes from Crowley’s hand. “We’ll be out by the end of next week.”

“Not sssoon enough,” Crowley replied immediately, some of his words coming out sounding like a hiss. “By Friday.”

“That’s only two days!” Mugsie had apparently found his voice, thank God. 

“I fail to sssee the isssssue.” Oh yeah, definitely a hiss.

Wills opened his mouth to start listing all the stuff they’d have to move, but he was cut off by the man in white...tutting? “Oh really, Crowley,” he said in a judgmental tone. “These chaps are being quite cooperative. Why are _ you _ being so difficult?”

Wills gasped and his eyes flicked back to Crowley, certain he was about to see the terror of a man in action. But instead, Crowley just sighed and rubbed his eyes behind his dark glasses.

“Fine,” Crowley amended. “Next _ Thursday_, you will have completely vacated Eastcastle Street.”

Mugsie snorted and looked like he was going to crack wise, so Wills shot out a hand and smacked his arm. His boss closed his mouth. And a good thing, too, since Crowley continued in a silky voice, “Any member of your little _gang _ that I or any of my men see on that street at 12:01 am on Friday will be shot on sight.” 

“What if we shoot youse guys first?” Mugsie came back with, suddenly having regained all of his bravado.

The snake on Crowley’s companion’s shoulders hissed menacingly. 

The nastiest, oiliest grin Wills had ever seen spread across the mafia don’s face. “You’d have to see us first, gentlemen. And haven’t you heard? We sssslither in the ssshadowsss.” And he lowered his sunglasses down his nose to bare the truly horrifying snakelike pupils behind.

Both men jumped up. “Yes, sir, Mr. Crowley,” Mugsie gasped out. “I apologize, sir.”

“We’ll be gone, sir, we swear,” Wills added for good measure, trying not to make it obvious that he was edging behind his chair to put as much space as possible between himself and the man.

“Good,” Crowley murmured, “Now, _ get_. _ out_.” His voice was barely above a whisper, but it was so whip sharp and dripping with such disgust that it felt as if it was a shout loud enough to wake the devil himself.

Tripping over themselves, Mugsie and Wills fled the room.

Once they were outside and several blocks away, they slowed to a walk and Mugsie turned to Wills. “He, uhh, was something, huh?’

Wills swallowed slowly and replied, “Mmhmm. Definitely as scary as they say he is.”

“Who was that other guy, the pouf, you think?”

“Who knows?” Wills asked rhetorically, “but I do worry about him, living in a house with that..._thing_.” He didn’t know if he meant the man or the snake, but it didn’t really matter.

They walked off into the night, already planning their immediate withdrawal from Eastcastle Street. 

***

Back in the room they’d rather hastily vacated sat an angel and a demon. The snake had slithered off his shoulders and out of the room, and thus the angel had found his way into a perch on the over-sized desk, placed so that his swinging legs were contained rather nicely by Crowley’s spread knees. Crowley was leaned forward, each hand clutching a generous portion of Aziraphale’s thighs, and his forehead rested lightly on the angel’s stomach. It didn’t look overly comfortable, but Crowley did love to contort himself in odder and odder ways. 

“I should never have gone to that church,” Crowley bemoaned, mostly muffled into Aziraphale’s waistcoat. “Never have diverted that bomber. Never saved those _ damnable books_. What has my life become since? I used to be _ feared_, you know. Now there’s rumors of the _ angel on my shoulder _ whose tamed me. I’m going to lose my influence! My power!”

“Oh come now, my dear,” Aziraphale scolded, his hand running gently through the red locks before him. “Those gentlemen were _ terrified _ of you. You haven’t lost your touch in the slightest.” He was just enough of a bastard to sound vaguely breathless at the idea, as if the power Crowley has amassed for himself in London’s back alleyways was a _ turn-on_.

“Pffft,” Crowley replied. “You still force me to work twice as hard at intimidation."

“You’re very scary, my darling,” Aziraphale soothed. “Never you fear. Oscar helps with that, too, you know.”

Crowley snorted inelegantly into the rich fabric his nose was smooshed into, still in protest of the name Aziraphale had given the snake Crowley had taken as a pet and had been happily calling ‘Snake’ before the angel moved in. “’S important, you know. Fear’s all I got.”

"And you, my dear, are all that I have, in return," Aziraphale murmured. Heaven had been out of contact for _years_ and while he had felt dreadful about feeling cut off from the Host initially, he'd come to realize quite suddenly that there was only one being he put above all others, and all it had taken was a destroyed church.

Crowley made another noise into his stomach, and Aziraphale smiled. "Gotta be scary. ’S not like you'd let me off them. Or that I'd want to," Crowley added much more quietly, almost too quietly for the angel to hear. "Though they are all awful humans, really."

Because they were only stories, of course. Crowley had never killed, and his men always miraculously missed their living targets, even before he’d compromised his entire organization by saving a bag of books and shacking up with the bag’s owner. 

But rumors became myths, and myths inspired fear. The right whispers in the right ears spawned a new reign of terror.

And it was in that way that Crowley wreaked havoc on London, while simultaneously severely cutting down the number of mafia-related murders. 

“I’ll leave you to it next time,” Aziraphale allowed, which was as good as Crowley was going to get. “But I really do want to show you my new book. It boasts the…” 

And he was off, prattling on about the book’s attributes, and Crowley smiled into the soft velvet against his face and murmured, “Anything for you, angel.”

**Author's Note:**

> I adore this sandbox and would love to play in it more!! How they got to this point, what happens after, how we go from here to canon (I have ideas and they *hurt*), slices of life...I’m into it all. Taking prompts for it over at my [Tumblr](https://runwiththisdinosaur.tumblr.com/Tumblr).
> 
> I’d love to make more friends in this fandom, so come over to my Tumblr and yell at me about our idiots and GO and whatever!


End file.
